


Five Times Kirk Surprises Uhura

by ClockworkQuill



Series: Surprises Verse [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Background Relationships, Character Death, Demiromantic Character, Demiromantic Jim Kirk, Its not overtly stated though, Jim Has Issues, Sex Work, Tarsus IV, why is that not a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 22:29:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13327701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkQuill/pseuds/ClockworkQuill
Summary: Okay this was half me trying to do a 5+1 half excuse to write some headcannons.  Title is pretty self explainitory.





	1. 1. Brunch

**Author's Note:**

> So this first scene is my entire reason for writing this fic basically. And one of the headcannons that got me started writing fic actually.
> 
> Basically Uhura goes to Brunch with Gaila and Jim, Hendorff makes an ass of himself and a brief discussion of sex work.
> 
> Remember, sex work is work folks.

Uhura really didn’t want to do brunch with Kirk of all people. He was a cocky, flirtatious ass who picked fights and, she suspected, cheated in class. Because there was no other way she could put together the party boy she had seen with the rumors of him being a stack of books with legs and his frankly spectacular grades. But Gaila had insisted. Because somehow her Orion roommate and crush had become friends with Kirk, of all people.

“I don’t see what you have against him, Ny, Jim is great. Kind, respectful-”

“He’s respectful?” Nyota said before taking a sip of her mimosa. She wondered how much she would have to drink to tolerate Jim Kirk at 0930 on a Sunday morning.

“Well, to me at least. Men here are assholes. Kirk doesn’t judge.” Nyota had to admit she didn’t think Kirk would treat Gaila any different for being Orion, or a former Orion slave girl, unlike many of the other cadets that seemed to think that meant they could treat her like shit. “Besides, Kirk gets it.” Gaila finishes with a shrug.

“Sorry I’m late ladies,” Kirk saunters in. “Gaila,” he kisses her cheek before sitting down in the empty chair next to her then nods at Uhura, “Margaret.”

“No,” Uhura takes a large gulp finishing up her mimosa. She waved down a waiter to get her another.

Gaila giggled. She thought Nyota making Kirk guess her first name was hilarious. “How did your test in Warp Theory go?”

Kirk shrugged. “It was boring. I don’t get what’s the big deal, it's not like the warp equations are hard or anything.”

“Not hard?” Nyota asked after another gulp of mimosa. That class kicked her ass last term.

“I mean, I stole one of my mom’s PADDs and memorized the equations when I was still in kindergarten, so like yeah.”

“Kindergarten?” Nyota laughs. The alcohol is making Kirk more tolerable, yeah, but she’s also starting to realize she is quite possibly well on her way to drunk before 1000. 

Kirk shrugged. “I’ve been told I lacked adequate stimulus as a child. I found it my own ways.” Nyota didn’t realize this referenced his sexual and fighting behaviors as much or more than his apparent self-education until she sobered up that afternoon. 

They continued chatting, mostly Gaila with either Kirk or Uhura, but occasionally Kirk or Uhura would talk with each other. Mainly small talk or stuff relating to classes. Kirk was still a first year command cadet, and Nyota was a second year communications, so most of the crossover was mandatory classes all cadets had to take, but there was more than Uhura would have thought. “You’re taking classes in communications and engineering?”

“I mean yeah, i had to petition for the higher course load, and I’m going to have to take summer classes but I’m on track to graduate command with emphasis in communications and engineering in three years.”

Nyota scoffed. “Three years?” She probably couldn’t blame that one on the drink.

“Yep.”

Whatever Nyota was about to say is cut off when a security cadet - the one that started the fight with Kirk that night Nyota first met him - sauntered up. “What’d’ya know, the man-slut and the whore. Couldn’t find any more willing girls to fuck without paying huh Kirk?”

“Mornin’ Cupcake,” Kirk grins and Nyota groans. She does not need a repeat of that night this morning. It was brunch, for fuck’s sake, not a dive bar. “Now, I don’t usually talk shop at the table, but since you brought it up, my services run 800 credits an hour, 4,000 a night. If you’re interested in my services I have a number I can give you. I don’t discriminate against assholes. Until then, kindly, leave the sex work talk for the bedroom honey.” Kirk calmly went back to eating his biscuits and gravy. The security cadet seemed too stunned to respond.

“You don’t have to stand up for me you know,” Gaila said somberly after some of the other Cadet’s friends dragged him away.

“Nah, Gal, he’s just an ass. Cupcake likes picking fights almost as much as me, I swear. Not the first time I’ve gone toe to toe with the bastard.” Kirk grins again. “Might be the first time it didn’t come to blows.”

“Are you really a- a-”

“Full service sex worker.” Gaila supplied.

Kirk nodded. “Well, technically I suppose ‘was’ would be more accurate. Not much time really for work between classes.”

“Were, were you working the night…” Nyota trailed off.

Kirk laughed. “Oh Marjorie, I don’t have to look for clients. Anyone I pursue is purely for my own enjoyment.” He winked.

Nyota couldn’t help blushing. She blamed it on the drink as she knocked back half of another mimosa.


	2. 2. Mouth Breather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this is THAT scene from the movie. Large portions of dialogue basically stripped off the script there. We don't actually see much of Jim but whatever. More of a Gaila & Uhura chapter but whatever.
> 
> Also, Kirk has funny ideas about love and dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh, Uhura is kind of cussing in Draconic here. Like Dragonborn Draconic not Classical Draconic.
> 
> Yeah, I'm a nerd.
> 
> Originally it was just a placeholder until I could look up something in Klingon or something but I'm keeping it in. Because I can. Whatever.
> 
> I curse in conlang all the time. I even mix my conlangs together. You don't like it, karshoji zesha-uh nash-veh.
> 
> There's some other cussing in here too.

It was a bitch of a day and Uhura wanted nothing more than to collapse onto her bunk and pass the fuck out. Then she got in her dorm and Gaila smelled like pheromones. Uhura pretended like she couldn’t tell her roommate and one of her crushes probably hadn’t just got back from having sex with someone else.

“Hey,” Gaila smiled that dazzling smile of hers.

“Hey,” Uhura couldn’t help smiling back.

“How are you?”

“Good.” It wasn’t an entire lie. She was exhausted but not strictly bad. “The strangest thing, I was in the long-range sensor lab…”

“Yeah… I thought all night.” Something about the way she said that struck Nyota as odd, and she started to shake it off, until she heard the breathing coming from under Gaila’s bunk. No wonder she smelled.

“I was tracking solar systems and I picked up an emergency transmission.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, from a Klingon prison planet.”

“No?”

“Yeah. A Klingon armada was destroyed. 47 ships.

“So, you’re not going back to the lab tonight?”

“Gaila, who is he?”

“Who’s who?”

“The mouth breather hiding under your bed.”

A blond head peaks out, “you could hear me breathing?”

“You!” That karshoji Kirk.

“Big day tomorrow,” Kirk smirked, but the cockiness didn’t reach his eyes. She looked at him more closely. He had been breathing loudly, but it was shallow and quick, like he couldn’t catch his breath.

“You’re gonna fail.”

Kirk shrugged as he got out from under Gaila’s bed, the action seeming to relax him. “Gaila, see you around.”

“Get out.” Of all people, Gaila brought him here. She hoped neither him nor Gaila could hear the wavering in her voice. 

“If I pass, will you tell me your first name?”

“No, goodnight.” Uhura practically pushed him out the door.

“I think the fact that you picked up a transmission is very interesting,” Kirk said with a wink as he went out the door.

It was silent in the door room for a moment. “I know you don’t like him Ny, and that I wasn’t supposed to bring him here, but you didn’t have to be such a bitch.” Gaila’s voice sounded sad.

“Me, a bitch?” Uhura winced at the edge she couldn’t manage to keep out of her voice.

“I just, I just wanted our first time to be on my terms you know? You weren’t supposed to be in so I thought I could manage it, that I wouldn’t disturb you.”

“Your first time?”

“Do you know how long I’ve been trying to woo Jim? Ny, it’s taken me two and a half years.” Nyota had no idea. She thought they had probably been fucking the whole time. “I mean we’ve gone on a couple of dates, more than a couple, but he had this weird idea that we couldn’t date and fuck. Like how weird is that?”

Nyota was baffled. She had no idea what to say to that. And she definitely wouldn’t have expected it from Kirk of all people. “Pretty weird.”

“And so I finally get him into bed, and we’re not even naked, but things are getting hot and heavy you know? And then I fucked up. Big time.”

“What happened?” Uhura was about 1000% sure she really didn’t want to know. But she was pretty sure Gaila was going to tell her anyways.

“I told him I loved him. I figured it would be better now, like, you can’t say that for the first time while you’re having sex, or after. Just it isn’t real then.”

Yeah, Nyota really didn’t need to karshoji know that. Her heart might be breaking a little. Or a lot. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. So she just nodded.

“He freaked the fuck out. Like he said ‘that’s so weird’ and when I turned the lights on he was hyperventilating and shaking.”

“What?”

“I think he might have been having a panic attack or something. And I was freaking out because like, Jim Kirk panicking, because I told him I loved him. And then we heard you and I panicked and shoved him under the bed.” Gaila looked as close to heart broken as Ny had ever seen her.

Nyota wanted to take the Orion girl in her arms. She wanted to do more than that. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t take advantage of her friend like that. She couldn’t mess up the probably blossoming relationship with Professor Spock like that. So she did the only thing she could. “I’m sorry,” Nyota said as she collapsed onto her bunk.

“Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?”

“I don’t know Gal. I don’t know.” Nyota really didn’t know what to think about Kirk anymore at all.


	3. 3. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uhura and Kirk deal with the loss of Gaila after the Narada Incident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim is totally clueless about love, let alone romantic love.
> 
> As someone aspec I gotta say its so easy to not be sure what romantic love is and being really confused by anything remotely romantic, and to exerience self-doubt and guilt about romantic things. Jim's grief doesn't help matters much.

Uhura stood at the door to her and Gaila’s dorm at a loss. She couldn’t bare to go inside and se all of Gal’s stuff. What would she even do with it? It’s not like Gaila had any family to return the effects to. She hadn’t even had very many friends besides Uhura. And Kirk.

Kirk. The man Gaila had loved. The man who didn’t love Gaila back. The man who saved Earth. The man she had spent the last three years fighting with and being annoyed by. The man who managed to emotionally compromise Spock. Her boyfriend. She had a boyfriend now. And Gaila, Gaila was gone.

Maybe she would pack Gal’s stuff up, put it in storage. Maybe she would give Gal’s stuff to Kirk. She would like that. Not sure if Kirk would. And if he would just through Gaila’s stuff out? No, Nyota couldn’t deal with that. She couldn’t bare it if her best friend, her roommate, her major crush’s stuff were to be thrown away. 

She couldn’t face what was inside that room, but she had nowhere else to go.

“Hey,” the voice was soft.

“Kirk.” There was none of the usual bite to her word. She just didn’t have the energy for it.

“I can’t believe she’s really gone.” There was something to Kirk’s voice Nyota couldn’t identify, couldn’t place. 

She turned to face Kirk instead of the door. “Me neither.”

“She was just so vibrant. So full of life. I can’t believe I lost another person. And to that bastard.” Oh yeah, Nero had killed his father as well.

“I keep expecting her to walk around a corner,” Nyota admits.

Kirk smiles and it’s something sad and heartbreaking. “She told me she loved me.”

“I know.”

“No one ever told me that before. Like anyone.”

Nyota was surprised. “Surely your parents-”

Kirk laughed bitterly. “What parents? My dad died three minutes after I was born. My mom hardly even looked at me. I grew up in foster care until my mom married a drunk bastard who beat me. My brother blamed me for everything going wrong in his life. Gaila was the first person to say she loved me. And now, now…” he trailed off, tears in his voice.

“She really did love you. She was so terrified she had fucked everything up with you. After you freaked out and she panicked and everything.”

“I don’t even kn-know what l-l-love is.” Kirk sounded, looked so utterly broken. Like his soul was crumbling. Nyota didn’t know what to do. This Kirk was so unlike the brash, cocky man she had started to get to know.

“You cared for her right?”

Kirk nodded, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Then that’s enough Kirk. That’s enough.”

“C-call me Jim.”

Uhura smiled emptily and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you Jim, I’m Nyota.”

Kirk chuckled half-heartedly, but shook her hand.


	4. +1 Out of Sync

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk tries to talk to Uhura about her breakup, but he's a little late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim and Spock have some communications issues.

“Hey, Nyota, are you doing okay?” Jim said plopping down next to her in the officer’s mess.

“Kirk, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You know, with the breakup.”

Nyota blinked at Kirk for a full minute. She was really damn certain Christine and her were doing really well. What the hell break up- oh. “You mean Spock and I?” He nods. “Jim that was over a year ago.”

Kirk’s brows furrowed in confusion. “But-”

“I’ve been dating Chapel for 13 months Kirk.”

Jim grins at that. “Oh really? That’s hot.”

“Pervert,” she laughs. 

“But if you’ve been,” the confusion was back, now with a measure of hurt. “Why didn’t he tell me.”

“I don’t know Jim. Spock and I, we’re still friends. We should have always been friends. I love him sure, but I’m not in love with him. I wasn’t ever really. But I am in love with Christine. And I’m pretty sure he was never in love with me either.”

Kirk slumped and picked at the food on his plate. “You guys always seemed so in love.”

Nyota laughed. “I told myself I was I guess. Even I never believed it I don’t think. I liked him well enough, but he was a consolation prize.”

Kirk looked shocked and hurt and a little horrified. “Why then?”

Nyota shrugged. “Gaila wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

Kirk’s eyes widened. “Oh. Fuck.” They were both silent for a moment. “Wait, 13 months, that’s…”

“We broke up just after you woke up.”

“Wha-”

“When you died, well, it became pretty clear we were both spending our lives with the wrong person.”

Kirk stared at Uhura for a long while, letting that sink in, breakfast forgotten.

“Are you, are you saying?”

“You should go talk to Spock.”

Kirk knocked over his chair as he left.

Nyota was going to kill Spock later.


	5. 4. Missng History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crew of the Enterprise is sent on a aid mission to a planet experiencing famine. Kirk acts weird, cuts everyone but an Ensign Riley and no one knows why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might eventually write a fic that has nothing to do with Tarsus.

It was just supposed to be a milk run. Normally it would be something a supply ship would bother with, but Enterprise was the closest ship that could respond to the SOS, and well, ever since Tarsus Starfleet had been pretty good at responding to those sort of things as quickly as possible. Uhura should have known it was all going to go wrong. 

If for no other reason she should have known it, it should have been Kirk’s odd behavior. The way he stiffened when the word famine was first mentioned. On their way to the colony Kirk was even more restless than usual, tapping his fingers on the arm of the captain’s chair, kicking out his legs. 

Or it should have been that he forgot to tell Sulu what Warp to take to head there. Or the way he snapped at Sulu “Just get us there as fast as the ship will take us.” That he simply called the enterprise ‘the ship.’ 

Or it should have been the way the tension left the bridge as the Captain stormed out, off to meet some Ensign Riley who had recently finished his engineering rotation and moved to communications. It should have been that the Captain went running to an Ensign no one knew how Kirk knew, or why the Captain had called the boy Kev when he first tried to contact him via shipboard communications. Or that that Ensign ended up on the away team for no reason that anybody but Kirk could explain; or the hushed conversation between the Captain and First officer when Kirk refused to offer any explanation.

Or it should have been the way Kirk completely cut out McCoy and Spock, his best friends and boyfriend. Outside of duty Kirk refused to speak to either for the 31 hours it took to reach the colony. Kirk wouldn’t speak to anyone except that ensign. The ensign that refused to answer questions about he knew Kirk, even from superior officers and jealous Vulcans.

Things were obviously off, something was clearly bothering the Captain. But Uhura didn’t realize things were truly and horrendously wrong until the away team landed in a rotted wasteland.

As most of the away team choked on the smell of rotting crops Kirk and Ensign Riley looked at each other. “Figures,” the Captain says, “Almost feels like home.”

Riley smirks back at the Captain. “Just like Tarsus, huh JT.”

“Let’s hope it’s not Kev. That was a shithole.”

“Fucking-a.”

Kirk turned to the rest of the away team. “Phasers out, set to stun. Scan for life signs. Survivors are as likely to be hostile as not, even children. Be on your guard everyone. Shit’s gone sideways and we’ve only just arrived.”

“You were expecting this Captain,” Spock states.

“Yeah well, when the SOS came in nearly identical to the one I sent out back then, rose some red flags.”

“Back then?” Uhura found herself asking. Needing confirmation to what Riley and Kirk had alluded to. That they had survived that massacre and famine.

“Captain, there are…” Kirk went over to talk with the security officer.

Riley turned to Uhura. “JT and I grew up on Tarsus sir.” He said it with a small smile and a shrug. 

“You, you must have been a kid.” Uhura said horrified.

Riley laughed, though there was little mirth in it. “Four, when we came out of the massacre. JT was 13.”

“The massacre?”

“We were on the kill list,” the tone in Riley’s voice sounded as if he were explaining something to someone who was exceptionally young or dull. “Sir.”

Uhura couldn’t speak. She prided herself on being a communications expert and she had never seen the signs, not in either man. And she should have. The signs were there plain to see in the past day and a half at least, and Uhura had missed them all.

“I never knew,” Spock whispers, sounding nearly as devastated as he had arriving on the teleporter without his mother right after Vulcan’s destruction.

The Captain told them all to get in formation as they moved towards where lifesigns had been found. 

By the end of the mission a lot about James T. Kirk made more sense then Uhura ever thought she would understand.


	6. 5. Kirk Asks for Vulcan Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk knocks on Uhura's door in the middle of the night needing advice about how to give some potentially upsetting news to his Vulcan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of cussing in this one.
> 
> Chocolate wine is crazy. And is absolutely nothing like wine. Very much chocolatey though. Also it burns. Not my drink of choice.

Someone was knocking at her door. At 0300. Someone was fucking knocking at her door. She just got of fucking Beta shift and someone was knocking at the door in the middle of the fucking night. Nyota groaned. She wondered if she could just tell the person to fuck off and go back to sleep.

“Uhura!” Kirk sounded downright panicked.

“Computer, open door.” Kirk practically fell in the room as the door whooshed open. “What the hell Kirk, do you know what time it is?” Nyota stretched as she sat up in her bed. 

Kirk sat down on the ground next to her bed. “I need your help.”

“At 0300.”

“You remember Carol?”

“Kirk, it's the middle of the fucking night.”

“Well I slept with her. Like before Spock. Like months before Spock. Well duh because she left before Spock and I but. And well, you’re Spock’s best friend.”

“Get to the karshoji point Kirk.”

“She just told me we have a son.”

Nyota blinked. Oh hell. “And why does this require my advice?”

“How do I tell Spock I have a son whose mother is in the hospital with terminal cancer?”

Double hell. Nyota dragged her out of bed. “I need coffee for this Kirk.” Strong coffee. Thank everything there were replicators in officer’s quarters. She handed Kirk one of the terrible coffees and sat down next to him. She winced as she took a sip of hers, just as he grimaced. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not letting David go into the system.”

“You were in the system.” Nyota remembered him saying that during that conversation about Gaila when they had finally gotten back to earth after the Narada incident.

“It’s horrible Nyota. Like really terrible. Frank was better than foster care and he was an abusive fuck.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Kirk frowned. “I, I don’t… Go back to earth I guess. Retire maybe. Or try to get some post planetside. Maybe at the Academy. Teach or whatever.”

“Jim, you’ll be miserable.”

“I’m not letting that kid grow up like me Nyota. One parent dead and another in the black. No kid deserves that. Besides, he’s my son.”

“So you’re going to leave the Enterprise?” Nyota was shocked. She didn’t realize Jim Kirk could still shock her, but this, this did it. Death even couldn’t keep the Enterprise from Kirk.

“What other choice do I have? I’m his father, and I’ve already missed years Nyota. Years. And Carol has a few months left at best. He’s going to need me.”

“So you have to tell Spock not only that you and Carol Marcus had a son, but that you didn’t know, and now you have to leave the Enterprise to take care of him because Carol is dying?”

Kirk downed the rest of his coffee, groaned and fell to the floor dramatically. “Sums it up about right yeah.”

“Chocolate.” It was probably a bad idea, but really, it was the only one she had.

“Chocolate?”

“Vulcans react to it like humans do to alcohol.”

“Huh.”

Uhura’s communicator beeped. “Spock to Uhura.”

Uhura groaned as she grabbed the communicator. “Uhura here. What is it Spock?”

“Have you seen the Captain?”

“Please come get him from my quarters Spock.”

“On my way.”

“What the hell did you do that for?”

Uhura grabbed a bottle of chocolate wine from her closet that had been there longer than she could remember and handed it to Kirk. “This will do the trick. Talk to your boyfriend. And maybe take yourselves off Alpha tomorrow. I’m going back to bed.”


End file.
